Situation:
We create full dumps with WER and then they are sent to us thru automated systems. We have the pdbs and we can have the executable files as well.
If we don't put the pdbs together with the binary files Visual Studio does not show correct stack trace information. We were planing to use a Symbol Server so the symbols won't go with the binaries.
Question:
How can I tell Visual Studio where it should look for the binaries?
The reason why you need the binary executables is that the binaries contain the path to the PDBs. Using the path stored in the executable is unreliable, since the executable might e.g. be built on a build server that has different paths.
Instead, set up the symbol path in Visual Studio by going to Debug | Options and Settings ... | Debugging | Symbols and add the folder of your symbols or the location of your symbol server.